


perching on the soul

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: The Fault In His Automail (EdWin Week 2020) [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: During Canon, EdWin Week 2020, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: For EdWin Week 2020. Day 1: Hope“You have a lead, don’t you?”
Relationships: Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell
Series: The Fault In His Automail (EdWin Week 2020) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726453
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	perching on the soul

There’s something different about their visit, this time.

Well, there’s a _lot_ of things different about their visit, actually. Al is in pieces, for one (Winry is honestly surprised that Ed is so calm about it; you’d think he’d be a little freaked out, but maybe the freak-out already happened, and that’s telling, isn’t it?). Then there’s Ed’s arm, completely unsalvageable (which has _never_ happened—yes, he wrecks it, but never like _this_ , that _irresponsible_ _little_ —). And they have a tagalong in the form of the ever-boisterous Major Alex Louis Armstrong (who was all-too happy to boom his name at maximum volume, but otherwise seems pretty decent for a military officer). It’s a dizzying series of firsts that might have been a whirlwind if they came one after the other, but crashed together into a single event are only intensely yet briefly disorienting, and then allow her the freedom to process it all at once so she can regain her footing almost immediately.

But there’s something else. Something unseen and unnamed, so tactile it can’t be ignored. A hum in the air, like a half-remembered tune you hadn’t even realized you’d forgotten.

It’s in the way Al has remained peaceful despite existing in pieces, asking about her work expectantly but otherwise voicing no complaint. It’s in the way Ed’s impatience is more juvenile than irritable, like a little kid wondering why dessert isn’t ready yet rather than throwing a tantrum over the delay. It’s in the way they talk to each other, something bright and buttery lacing their words as they discuss their plans for what comes after this brief pit-stop.

If there is a word for it, Winry has forgotten it. Or perhaps she has forgotten what the symptoms of it look like in someone other than herself. There’s a distinctive abstractness about the familiarity of it—like a recurring dream, experienced a hundred times before but never in reality. It alights across their faces, dances in Al’s soulfire eyes and smooths the edges from Ed’s too-sharp gaze and buries beneath their skin like splinters.

And... it’s not bad, this thing. The bright echo of it seeps into the ligaments of her fingers as she pieces together metal scraps into a masterpiece. A masterpiece that, hopefully, will be able to survive Ed’s destructive tendencies. Because whatever it is in the air between the brothers, that shimmering thing that flutters beyond name, it makes her want to work harder than she ever has before.

On the second night, with her workshop dyed saffron from lanternlight and the smell of burning midnight oil mixing with machine oil, there’s a telltale squeak of the doorhinges. She pauses around the framework she was piecing together.

A glance in her periphery confirms it. There Ed is, peering through a crack in the door, honey eyes dagger-sharp with anticipation. Without his other arm, he can’t braid his hair without asking for help, which is something he’s loathe to do even when he desperately needs it—but the ponytail he’d managed earlier has fallen out, his golden hair pilling liquid around his shoulders like a molten halo. Distantly, she muses that she’s a little glad he decided to grow his hair about, because it’s actually a really good look for him, the saffron spillage that frames his features in solidified sunlight.

Huffing, Winry turns back to her work. “If you’re _going_ to interrupt me, you could at _least_ bring me a glass of water.”

Completely unashamed, Ed pushes the door open completely. The hinges squeal a protest at his intrusion. “Is that some vital part of the mechanic’s process now?”

“It is, actually,” she returns, easy as breathing, and it’s amazing how easily they fall into their old routines like this, even when months stretch between their seeing one another. “A very sacred part. Go fetch me a glass, will you?”

To which he only scowls, discontent. “I’m not your damn errand boy.”

“ _Wow_.”

He sends her a bewildered, vaguely skeptical look. “What?”

“Well, I’m _hurt_ , Edward. I mean, I make the most stupendous automail in the whole wide world, and you can’t even get me a glass of water?” Her eyeroll is so dramatically exaggerated that she swears her optic nerve twinges in protest. He returns her playful smirk with an unamused glower. “ _Geez_. Guess that shows how much you appreciate me.”

“I’m hobbling around on a dinky spare leg, dammit.” If he had both arms, she doesn’t doubt they would be folded over his chest, a cloying clash between steel and flesh. 

“Mm... okay. I guess I can give you a pass.”

“Not to mention that you and Granny’re milking me for _every cent I have_ ,” he grumbles. He’s encroaching upon her workspace, then, his annoyance a tactile thing in the air as it bristles against the bastion of her concentration. 

“Duh. Quality isn’t free.” He’s leaning so far over her shoulder that she almost whacks him in the face with her elbow as she turns the mechanism over to thread the wiring through the the frame. “Now, is there a _reason_ you’re interrupting my billable hours, or are you just too impatient to sleep?”

In his ever-endless impatience, Ed’s attention has drifted away from in favor of eyeing the framework. There something rapt in his eyes as he watches her weave storm-grey cables around the metal suspension, clicking them into their proper connections and tightening them enough that they won’t catch when she mounts the outer cassis. Even without looking up at him, she can all but feel the impatience thrumming beneath his skin, the anticipation that prickles at his blood. Distraction though he may be, it does give her some satisfaction to know that he’s paying attention to her work. That whole appreciation thing had been a joke but... this is almost nice.

Then he goes and ruins it by remarking, in this honeyed tone that people only ever use for persuasion, “ _That_ looks functional.”

Winry pauses while reaching for her screwdriver. She looks first at the mechanism, then at Ed, then at the mechanism, then at Ed again. She knows he’s not an expert at automail or anything but... c’mon, _seriously_? This is just a skeleton that she’s only now bestowing metaphorical flesh and blood. It’s only half-finished.

Nope. He looks complete serious. Expectant, almost. The idiot.

“Uh huh. _Very_ functional,” she deadpans, leaning down to tighten a screw. “See, if I attach this to you now, it’ll fry your nerves and kill you.”

His brow crumples in thoughtful displeasure. With his remaining arm, he reaches out as though to give the mechanism an experimental poke. Before his hand can inch too close to the exposed wiring (he really _doesn’t_ have any sense of self-preservation, does he?), she snatches him by the wrist to keep him from being electrocuted. From the way he blinks at her and the exasperated look she throws his way, openly befuddled, you’d think he’d only just noticed her.

“Okay. So... just make it _not_ fry my nerves, and we’re good?”

“You have no understanding of the complexity of automail, do you?” she mutters, smacking his hand away.

““I _literally_ can’t think of anything worse than being a gearhead,” he deadpans. Joke’s on him—she left a nice, shiny grease-handprint on his wrist.

“How about being an alchemy freak?”

“At least _alchemy_ doesn’t get grease all over you.” He scowls down at his sullied wrist.

There’s a retort there, brimming silver-bright on the tip of her tongue, but then she steals another glance at him over her shoulder, and...

 _Right_ there. That brightness captured in the saffron rings of his irises, coils of some beautiful thing hammered down into a sheet of thin and luminous gold. Like someone reached into the deep, dark recesses of his being—plunged headlong into tangled webs of self-loathing and desperation and exhaustion from an endless guilt trip—and lit a tentative spark inside.

Her screwdriver clinks as she sets it down. “You have a lead, don’t you?”

Rather than deny it, his eyes just roll up to the ceiling in exasperation. “Armstrong _told_ you?”

“Nope.”

“Al, then.”

“No. Just a hunch.”

She can tell the inherently scientific part of him wants to rebel at that, refute on the basis of empirical evidence and three long years of empty promises and dead ends. But then the hard enamel of cynicism that clings to him so, had become scuffed and cracked in places from armoring him for so long, suddenly wavers. Then, inexplicably it softens away, and underneath is something she hasn’t seen in him in a long time—genuine, rather than forced.

“We’re close, Winry.” His words are soft, shuddering, as though fearing themselves. “Closer than we’ve ever been, I think.”

A shiver goes up her spine. Anticipation, excitement, uncertainty—it’s hard to tell what the cause is, they all muddy hopelessly together. He’s had “leads” before, but he always speaks of them with a bitter curl in his mouth, an impatience that stiffens his shoulders. Nothing ever came out of those.

This is different. This is _different_. She can _see_ it.

Just then, an image seizes at her heart—Ed and Al, whole and human, standing on her porch with identical grins. Twin golden gazes and solidness against her arms and warmth beneath her embrace. Laughter in her ear that she hasn’t heard since they were both little. Ed, two arms and two legs and brilliant against the daylight.

Snorting in an attempt to hide the wet itch in her eyes, she returns, “Well in _that_ case, Edward, would you please leave me in _peace_ so I can finish your arm? —Which you had _better_ _not break_ or so help me _god_ —”

“ _Geez_.” In a flash, he’s back to his normal grumpy self, scowling as he whirls away. “Alright, alright, I’m _going_!”

“Good _night_ , alchemy freak,” she calls after him as he huffs off towards the door.

He waves at her lazily with his real arm—half acknowledgement, half dismissal. “‘Night gearhead.”

It’s then, with his silhouette dark against the doorway, that her ribcage gives a precarious shudder. In her mind’s eye, she can taste the summer sun on her tongue, can feel the brush of flesh fingers against her hand. Can see the solemnity of the vow in those amber eyes. Can see that very same solemnity slipping away as though it was never there.

Winry grips the table. “Ed?”

Ed pauses, blinking over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

 _Warmth beneath her embrace. Whole and human..._ “Come back soon, okay?”

His expression wavers, and he looks away so quickly she almost thinks he might be ashamed. “...don’t jinx it, Win.”

And then the hinges are squeaking as he disappears, latch bolt falling into place with a soft click.

For a long, long moment, Winry just keeps staring at the doorway. Imagines it’s her front door, the handle turning slow and lovely beneath the twist of her wrist, Den barking at the not-quite-strangers on the porch. Sunlight pounding against her vision as she throws the door open and threading shining fingers through golden hair. Shining golden eyes, laughter she hasn’t heard since they were both little.

She shakes herself, turning to the mechanism before her. None of that is going to happen unless she gets back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello world! It's been a while since I wrote some FMA fic, but hopefully this will help me get back into the swing of things.


End file.
